Abstract:
The population of the global is predicted to grow daily and reach 9.3 bilion people by the
year 2050. Thus, in order to ensure a sufficient supply of food, agricultural productivity
needs to be raised. In addition, the cost of food in Sri Lanka rise in July 2022 at a recordbreaking pace of 90.90% compared to the same month the previous year. Traditional
farming, hindered by insufficient fertilizers and pesticides, fails to address the heightened
demand, further diminishing productivity. The aim of the research is to the design of an
automated IoT system for the deepwater culture method of hydroponics for domestic Water
Spinach plant purpose. The results obtained were compared with the results obtained from
the traditional cultivation method. The MQTT platform is used when cultivation uses the
IoT method which is designed for IoT. In addition, Kincony esp32 A8 is used as the hardware
and sensors and controllers are connected. The data received from those devices is
configured with the Tasmota firmware and sent to the EMQX MQTT broker. Through the
integration of Node-Red and the app via broker, this project enables users to acquire realtime cultivation data and exercise control over cultivation process accordingly. After
connecting the hydroponics system, the parameters of pH, TDS and temperature were
obtained in the form of graphs and the parameters of lights, fan and pump to be controlled
were set to work manually. Results showed that reading the accuracy of the sensors
temperature, TDS and humidity is, 98.21% for temperature, 95.51% for TDS and 96.45%
for humidity. The proposed system aims to provide an efficient, cost-effective, and easy-touse solution for domestic hydroponic agriculture. The system's automation reduces the need
for constant manual monitoring, and the remote access feature allows users to monitor and
control the system from anywhere.